May 12: Wildflowers and a roadrunner

[neverspent]

Horsemint (Monarda bradburiana)

May produces the greatest variety of wildflowers here. On a short walk down the dirt road through the woods, I've been seeing these and more:

* Horsemint (such an exotic flower!)
* Arkansas beardtongue, a kind of penstemon
* Lance-leaved coreopsis
* Hairy phacelia
* False wild strawberries (Creeping cinquifoil)
* Heal-all
* Oxeye daisies (a whole field of them, in fact)
* Spiderwort, a pretty blue three-petaled flower I used to think was trillium and now I have trouble remembering its name
* Wild phlox
* Downy phlox
* Venus' looking-glass (one of my favorite names for a flower!)

In the pastures, in addition to the buttercups there are white and purple clover flowers. Of course the fences are overgrown with white-covered blackberry brambles and honeysuckle. On sunnier slopes I caught sight of the surprisingly red trumpet honeysuckle and fire pink, but didn't get photos of them myself. I saw some Queen Anne's lace for the first time this evening.

Other interesting things I saw today: a butterfly bumping into the side of a cat, and a roadrunner right by the southeast corner of the house. Roadrunners are fairly shy, and I've never even seen one in the yard before.

Comments

[jheaton.livejournal.com]

You have roadrunners in that part of the world? I thought they only lived in the southwest, though maybe that just means that everything I know about roadrunners I learned from watching Chuck Jones cartoons.

[neverspent]

We have rodeos here too! :)

We're in an area that's hard to define as far as regions go. It's west of the Mississippi River, so it's not the "southeast," but as far as plants and wildlife go we have more of the southeastern varieties than the western ones. On the other hand, whatever you'd find in eastern Oklahoma and North Texas can be found here as well, including lots and lots of armadillos. (Armadillos are currently my dad's number one pest because they're digging up the yards.) Up in dry clearings in the hills, you can find prickly pear cactus alongside the more Eastern types of hardwoods and Southern pines. So I agree, it does seem a little unexpected, but according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, the greater roadrunner's range expanded during the 20th century, so that we're included in the eastern extent of the range now.